Signal Shuffle in Rhode Island

*Sports radio fans in RHODE ISLAND have
one fewer choice this week. Last Monday, Citadel abruptly pulled
the plug on its "Score" sports simulcast at WSKO (790
Providence)/WSKO-FM (99.7 Wakefield-Peace Dale), ending just
over a decade of sports on the AM frequency and nearly six years
of the FM simulcast.

The
Score format had been hit hard by competition in recent years
from Entercom's WEEI-FM (103.7 Westerly), which came into the
market four years ago with a simulcast of Boston's WEEI (850);
its demise puts seven people out of work, including local Score
talk hosts Andy Gresh, Scott Zolak and Scott Cordischi.

In the place of sports, Citadel has flipped 99.7 to a simulcast
of its news-talk WPRO (630), while 790 spent last week running
the ESPN Radio network feed before flipping this morning to Citadel's
satellite "True Oldies Channel," with Don Imus continuing
in morning drive. (The stations had split their morning feeds,
with 99.7 carrying Opie & Anthony, now heard in Rhode Island
only via Boston's WBCN.)

For
now, 99.7 is using the WEAN calls that spent so many years on
790, while 790 is using the calls WPRV. We're not sure that will
turn out to be permanent - will Citadel move the WPRO-FM calls
from their longtime home on "92 Pro FM" at 92.3 over
to the AM simulcast at 99.7, and could WEAN end up back on 790?

There's no word yet, either, on where - or if - the New York
Yankees will be heard in Rhode Island this season; they'd been
heard on WSKO in recent years, providing something of a lifeline
to Yankees fans not only in Providence but well into Massachusetts.
(Yes, they exist.)

*In another bit of Ocean State news, Chris DiPaola's Southern
Rhode Island Public Broadcasting has reached a consent decree
with the FCC that will settle accusations of improper underwriting
announcements on WBLQ (88.1 Westerly, now WKIV). The FCC began
investigating WBLQ in late 2004, but rather than proceed with
a full Notice of Apparent Liability against the station, it agreed
to settle the matter. DiPaola's group will pay $7,500 in a "voluntary
donation" to the federal government, and the FCC will renew
WKIV's license and allow its transfer to EMF Broadcasting (which
has been operating the station since late 2005) to proceed.

*We've
known for more than a year now that Cox Radio is moving its WCTZ
(96.7) from Stamford, CONNECTICUT into NEW YORK
- but it was only last week that we learned where the station
hopes to move its transmitter now that it's changed city of license
from Stamford to Port Chester, New York.

Unlike Cumulus, which is moving WFAS-FM (103.9) from Westchester
County into the Bronx, it appears that Cox isn't directly targeting
New York City with its move. Instead, WCTZ will become a new
Long Island station, joining Cox's cluster that already includes
WBLI (106.1 Patchogue), WBAB (102.3 Babylon) and WHFM (95.3 Southampton).

Cox's application calls for a new transmitter site on a cell
tower in Roslyn, on Long Island's North Shore. With 4100 watts/361',
the class A signal will cover most of Nassau County and Queens,
with a decent signal over much of the Bronx and eastern Westchester
as well.

What format does Cox have in mind for its new Long Island
addition? We probably won't know for a while - it will take several
months, at least, for the FCC to grant the transmitter move and
for WCTZ to relocate from its present transmitter site in Stamford.

*One of upstate New
York's biggest TV groups has a new owner. Late on Friday, Clear
Channel quietly resolved its disagreement with Providence Capital
Partners over the value of its 56 TV stations, allowing the sale
to go forward at a revised price of $1.1 billion, $200 million
less than the companies had originally agreed on last April.
Providence will sell several of Clear Channel's West Coast stations,
operating the rest of the group under the Newport Television
name.

The sale to Newport separates the Rochester, Syracuse, Binghamton,
Albany and Harrisburg stations from Clear Channel radio clusters
in those markets, and that could lead to a bit of disruption
for some of the joint operations there. (That said, Clear Channel
never built up the promised synergies it hoped to achieve between
radio and TV; there had been talk of building a common studio
facility for radio and TV in Rochester, for instance.)

Will Newport lift the hiring freeze that we hear has been
quietly in place at many Clear Channel TV operations in recent
months? Stay tuned.

*Another
one of the veteran jocks ousted in the rocky transition from
CBS Radio to Entercom in Rochester last fall has landed a new
gig - right down the hall from his old station. Pete Kennedy,
whose 27-year career at WPXY (97.9 Rochester) ended when Entercom
declined to hire him upon purchasing the station, has signed
on with Entercom to be the new midday jock at classic hits "Buzz"
WBZA (98.9 Rochester).

In fairness, the Buzz is probably a better fit for Kennedy
these days than top-40 98PXY was - and it has an opening now
that afternoon guy Brian Robinson has moved around the corner
to the same shift classic rock WCMF (96.5 Rochester). Dem Jones
will move from middays to afternoons at Buzz to make room for
"The Mayor," who returns to the air on Wednesday.

WCMF, meanwhile, has lost the rights to Buffalo Bills football
after seven seasons. The Bills are going back to their former
home in Rochester, Clear Channel's WHAM (1180) - and NERW suspects
that will mean new Clear Channel employee Brother Wease will
end up doing the same Bills-related programming over there, including
a Monday night talk show, that he had been doing at WCMF.

Is a Binghamton radio veteran about to return to the airwaves?
We're hearing strong rumors that Louie G, who left Clear Channel's
WMRV (105.7 Endicott) last summer, is on his way to Citadel's
WWYL (104.1 Chenango Bridge.)

In Albany, WZMR (104.9 Altamont) morning co-host Cat Noel
is celebrating - the episode of ABC's Wife Swap that aired
March 3, in which she was one of the swappees, was the highest-rated
installment in the show's history. (It also revealed that she
has an "ON AIR" light outside her bathroom at home,
a fact that deeply impressed the geek crew here at NERW...)

In New York, Tim Scheld gets a promotion at WCBS (880): he's
now director of news and programming, after the budget cuts that
claimed PD Crys Quimby's job.

Over at Clear Channel, WWPR (Power 105.1) has joined sister
station WAXQ (Q104.3) in the cluster's new studios down at 32
Avenue of the Americas. One Q jock who'll be staying put there
for a while is morning co-host Shelli Sonstein; she just signed
a new multi-year contract with the station.

GETCHER 2008 TOWER SITE CALENDAR
- BEFORE THEY'RE ALL GONE!

Still haven't ordered your 2008 Tower Site Calendar?
You do realize that it's now...er...2008, don't you? We're already
down to the last 80 or so calendars, and they're going
fast. The 2006 and 2007 editions of the calendar sold out, and
this one will do so as well, possibly as soon as this month.

This year's edition is a particularly
fine one, if we do say so ourselves. From the cover photo of
KAST in Astoria, Oregon to the back cover shot of the Blaw-Knox
diamond tower at WBNS in Columbus, this year's calendar features
14 all-new full-color shots of famous broadcast sites far and
wide. There's KROQ in Los Angeles, KFBK in Sacramento, WESX in
Salem, WGAN in Portland, Black Mountain in Vegas, Mount Spokane
in Spokane, and many (ok, several) more.

The calendar is just $18 with
shipping and handling included - or better yet, beat our move
to mandatory subscriptions later this year and get a free calendar
with your $60 subscription to NERW for 2008. (Remember, the proceeds
from both the calendar and the subscriptions help keep NERW right
here on the web, as we head into our fourteenth year of news
and analysis.)

So click
right here and you can be sure to have your very
own Tower Site Calendar 2008! (And thank you!)

The 2008 Tower
Site Calendar is dedicated to the memory of Robert Eiselen (1934-2007),
whose digital imaging skills made even a bunch of pictures of
radio towers look almost like art. His contributions were essential
to the calendar's evolution from 2003 to the current edition,
and he will be missed dearly.

*It's been a quiet week in MASSACHUSETTS
- except where the region's numerous pirate stations are
concerned. The FCC's been issuing a flurry (relatively speaking)
of violation notices and forfeiture orders, including a big one
against a prominent pirate.

"Touch
106.1" was very visible in the Boston media last year, and
it's paying for its visibility now. The FCC visited the station's
Dorchester studios in January 2007, only to be denied entry for
an inspection of the station. That may have been an expensive
mistake for Charles Clemons, who was operating "Touch"
- he also failed to respond to the FCC's Notice of Apparent Liability,
and he's now on the hook for a $17,000 forfeiture. (That's $10,000
for unlicensed operation, and another $7,000 for refusing the
inspection.)

In Brockton, FCC agents visited Patrick St. Martin on March
6, warning him to shut down his 1620 kHz signal immediately or
face fines; a day earlier, Homer Alcindor of Brockton got the
same warning for his pirate on 105.5.

Out in western Massachusetts, a low-power FM station is changing
frequency. WLHZ-LP (licensed to Springfield, but operating from
Westfield) has a CP to move from 104.9 to 107.9, getting it out
of the way of another 104.9 LPFM in Holyoke.

There's a new news director at New England Cable News: Thomas
Melville has been promoted to that role, replacing Charlie Kravetz,
who's taking over from Phil Balboni as the network's president.

John Callaghan, who spent 21 years as sports anchor at the
old WNAC-TV (Channel 7) in Boston, has died. Callaghan is credited
with coming up with the "Cardiac Kids" nickname for
the 1967 Red Sox. He came to WNAC on the radio side in the early
1950s, moving to the sister TV operation for a run that lasted
into the 1970s, after which he spent some time in state government
before retiring to Great Barrington, where he died March 5 at
81.

*There's a new city of license for a big
FM signal in southern MAINE: Saga's WCLZ (98.9) is no
longer licensed to Brunswick - it's now officially a North Yarmouth
station. The move didn't (and won't) relocate WCLZ's transmitter
site, which is still in Brunswick behind its old studios - so
what's up? By "moving" to North Yarmouth, WCLZ brings
its main studio (in South Portland) within 25 miles of its city
of license. (It's just a hair over 25 miles from Saga's South
Portland studios to Brunswick.)

You can have
your ad here! Click
here
for information on the most economical way to reach tens of thousands
of Northeast radio and TV people each week.

*A student at NEW JERSEY's Montclair
State College got little WMSC (90.3) some time in the headlines
last week after the university began examining a video on MySpace
that appeared to show some raunchy activity in the WMSC studios.
The student, who goes by "Randy Rogers" on the air,
has been pulled from the station's airwaves, where he and a non-student
known as "Jay Jay Smooth" were hosting a Tuesday night
show called "Kinky Olympics."

In an interview with Paterson's HeraldNews, "Rogers"
says everything that happened in the video was consensual - and
that the "lap dancer" in the video is his girlfriend,
who was having a dispute with her mother, who reported the video
to the school. "Rogers" says no FCC rules were violated;
while the school investigates, he's moved his show over to a
webcast.

*In PENNSYLVANIA, the operator of
a long-running pirate station in Philadelphia now faces a $10,000
fine. Michael Stone Campbell, aka Monroe Campbell, aka Monroe
Stone, ran "WSKR" on 97.7 for more than a decade, drawing
an FCC visit last year. Stone/Campbell didn't respond directly
to the $10,000 Notice of Apparent Liability the FCC sent him.
He did, however, send a letter to Senator Arlen Specter, claiming
that he'd sent the FCC a license application that had gotten
lost. The FCC didn't buy the argument (which Specter's office
sent along without comment), and the $10,000 NAL is now a $10,000
forfeiture order.

We're getting ever closer to the return of baseball on the
airwaves, and there's a flagship change to report in Erie - the
AA Eastern League SeaWolves will be back on WFNN (1330) this
year, after spending last year on sister station WJET (1400).
There's also a new affiliate for the Lehigh Valley IronPigs,
the AAA team formerly known as the Ottawa Lynx that starts playing
in Allentown this spring. WPAZ (1370 Pottstown) becomes the fifth
station on the IronPigs network, carrying 15 games in the inaugural
season.

(Our full NERW Baseball on the Radio report begins next
week!)

*In
CANADA, there's some bad news for a Saint John, New Brunswick
station that's been hoping to make a format change.

CJEF (103.5 the Pirate) signed on in 2003 as CHHA, an all-comedy
station, and by 2006 it was asking the CRTC for permission to
drop its "specialty" license category (which forces
the station to run at least 50% spoken-word programming) so it
could flip to a hip-hop/modern rock hybrid. The CRTC denied that
change in 2006, and did so again last week; several other broadcasters
in the market filed oppositions in the case. "The Pirate"
is still running the hip-hop/modern rock mix, but it's playing
long blocks of comedy, too, to meet its conditions of license.

The CRTC has rescheduled its hearing on 11 applications for
new stations in the Ottawa market. Originally planned for Dec.
3, the hearing was postponed, and has now been moved to May 13.
At that hearing, the CRTC will also consider the sale of CHRC
(800 Quebec); an application for a new station on 90.3 in Montmagny,
Quebec (with a relay on 92.5 at St.-Fabien-de-Panet); an application
to add a relay transmitter on 101.5 in Montmagny for CFEL-FM;
an application to move CHGT (1270 Alma QC) to FM, on 97.7, with
50 kW/77.6; applications for new 50-watt community stations in
Alliston, Ontario (94.7) and Beeton-Tottenham, Ontario (105.1);
and an application from Evanov for a new signal on 104.9 in Shelburne,
Ontario (65 kW DA/60 m).

And the CRTC has put out calls for applicants interested in
new radio licenses in London and Guelph, Ontario. Applications
are due May 12.

From
the NERW Archives

(Yup, we've been doing this a long time now, and
so we're digging back into the vaults for a look at what NERW
was covering one, five and ten years ago this week, or thereabouts
- the column appeared on an erratic schedule in its earliest
years as "New England Radio Watch," and didn't go to
a regular weekly schedule until 1997. Thanks to LARadio.com
for the idea - and thanks to you, our readers, for the support
that's made all these years of NERW possible!)

March 19, 2007 -

When one of your town's most famous citizens is Stephen King,
you probably don't want to get him publicly riled up - especially
if you're the University of MAINE, and it's King's radio stations
that have been the flagship carriers for your sports coverage
for many years. And in fairness, it's not the university itself
that made the decision last week to move its sports rights from
King's WZON (620 Bangor) over to Clear Channel's WVOM (103.9
Howland) and WGUY (102.1 Dexter) - that call came from Learfield
Sports, to which the University sold its sports rights, under
the name "Black Bear Sports." It's Black Bear that
did the deal with Clear Channel, placing UMaine football and
hockey on WVOM, men's and women's basketball and some baseball
and softball games on WGUY, and creating a network that will
carry the games to other parts of the state as well.

Promoting the move on WVOM's morning show Thursday, station
officials said it would give the broadcasts a wider reach across
Maine, as well as restoring former Maine sports play-by-play
voice George Hale to a role in the broadcasts. (While semi-retired,
Hale still does some work with WVOM, a sister station to his
longtime broadcast home, WABI 910.)

King and his wife Tabitha have been frequent donors to the
university, and he fired back on the station's website Thursday:
"Tabby and I are very disappointed with the University's
decision to move its sports broadcasting rights to Clear Channel,
a company which is based far from the college it will be serving.
We understand that monetary considerations were a prime consideration,
but feel the Athletic Department in particular and the University
in general may not understand that making money the prime consideration
in any dealing is usually short-sighted. My wife and I feel that
may prove to be the case here; we feel that what UM Athletics
has gained for their programs may be offset by a loss in the
area of community relations."

As with any good Stephen King yarn, there's another twist
to the story: the Bangor stations are among the more than 400
nationwide that Clear Channel is trying to sell. Bids for the
cluster were due a few weeks ago, and Clear Channel is expected
to announce a buyer for the Bangor group any day now. Executives
there say the sale won't affect the UMaine deal, whatever happens.

In other news from New England, there's yet another TV station
sale to report in RHODE ISLAND (though technically, this one's
a MASSACHUSETTS station), as Freedom Communications has reached
a deal to sell ABC affiliate WLNE (Channel 6) to Global Broadcasting
LLC for an as-yet-undisclosed price. Global is headed by Kevin
O'Brien, who's spent time at the helm of the Cox and Meredith
TV station groups, departing the latter in 2004 after what Broadcasting
& Cable describes as a "stormy tenure" in which
most of the company's stations changed general managers and news
directors, not to mention an investigation of EEO violations.
Will the arrival of O'Brien and partner Robinson Ewert be less
tumultuous at WLNE, which is sitting firmly in third place in
the Providence market under Freedom? If nothing else, Global
enters at a time when the rest of the market's unsettled, too
- Media General just recently took over WJAR (Channel 10) from
NBC, while CBS is in the process of spinning off CW affiliate
WLWC (Channel 28) to new owners, leaving only the LIN duopoly
of WPRI (Channel 12) and WNAC (Channel 64) under stable ownership
at the moment.

In MASSACHUSETTS, Bob Bittner is trying something new at
his standalone AM station, WJIB (740 Cambridge). We've reported
in recent months on Bob's struggle with music rights fees, which
have skyrocketed now that WJIB has begun to make regular appearances
to the left of the decimal point in the ratings. WJIB also lost
the income it was receiving from leasing two morning weekday
hours to Radio France International, and now Bob says he needs
to raise $88,000 this year just to keep the lights on. The result:
an announcement last week that WJIB will experiment with listener
support. If Bob can raise the needed money by June 30, he'll
keep his standards format on the air at WJIB with no commercials
and only a few interruptions (mostly for the Sunday church services
that help keep the station afloat.) If he doesn't get enough
money by June 30, Bob says he'll return whatever donations have
come in by then - and he'll have some tough decisions to make.
He doesn't want to air commercials, so one possibility is that
WJIB may go up for sale. Whaever happens, Bob says his other
station, WJTO (730) in Bath, Maine, is safe, since it's not under
the royalty-fee pressure that WJIB faces.

It's either the worst-kept secret in western PENNSYLVANIA
radio or some really clever stunting, but we're betting that
the impending format change at CBS Radio's WRKZ (93.7 Pittsburgh)
is for real. If blog postings from former WDVE stalwart Scott
Paulsen and former KDKA talk host John McIntire are to be believed,
"K-Rock" will relaunch April 2 as "The Zone,"
with FM talk and a lineup that will include Paulsen in afternoon
drive. WRKZ already airs Opie & Anthony's syndicated morning
show, which will stay, and the rumor mill suggests some of CBS'
"Free FM" offerings from elsewhere in the country will
fill some of the less-prime slots in the "Zone" schedule.

March 17, 2003 -

Forty-four years after his NEW YORK radio career began, legendary
morning man Harry Harrison will make his last broadcast on WCBS-FM
(101.1 New York) this Wednesday morning, in what's being seen
as another sign of big changes coming on the Big Apple's longtime
oldies outlet. Harrison has been a New York fixture since his
days as midday man on WMCA (570), where he was a "Good Guy"
from 1959 until 1968. That year, Harrison replaced Herb Oscar
Anderson in morning drive on WABC (770), where he would remain
until 1979. In 1980, Harrison began 24 years in morning drive
on WCBS-FM, where he'd eventually be joined by other WABC legends
including Dan Ingram and Ron Lundy.

Longtime WCBS-FM listeners have already heard some changes
in the last year or so: the disappearance of most of the pre-Beatles
music from the playlist, the dismissal of morning sports guy
Phil Pepe, and the recent departure of another WABC veteran,
Dan Daniel, from middays -- so it's no wonder that the abruptness
of Harrison's departure (he announced for the first time on Friday's
show that this Wednesday's would be his last) is sparking plenty
of discussion on the message boards and beyond.

Harrison says the decision to leave WCBS-FM right now is
all his -- and he's not "retiring," leaving the door
open to a return to the dials at some point. WCBS-FM hasn't named
a replacement; Dan Taylor will be doing the shift on an interim
basis after Harrison's final show, which he'll broadcast in front
of a live audience at Manhattan's Museum of Television and Radio.

Only Harry Harrison is big enough to keep this next item
from being our lead story this week: more than a year after it
launched, the YES network has finally won carriage on the Cablevision
systems serving Long Island, northern New Jersey, southern Connecticut,
the Bronx, Westchester and Rockland. A deal reached between Cablevision
and YES last week provides at least a little something to make
both sides happy: Cablevision won't have to make YES available
on its basic tier (thus increasing cable rates for all its subscribers),
instead offering it a la carte for $1.95 or as part of a sports
tier with MSG and Fox Sports NY for $4.95 a month; YES gets the
same $2.12 per subscriber per month from Cablevision that it's
been charging other cable operators. It's a mixed bag for Yankees
fans: some of them had been getting MSG and Fox Sports without
an extra fee (they'll now have to pay for that $4.95 package,
though their basic cable rate will decrease somewhat), and anyone
who wants YES will need a set-top box to descramble the channel.

A station sale in MASSACHUSETTS is all in the family: Marlin
Broadcasting is selling WBOQ (104.9 Gloucester) to Westport Broadcasting
for $5.8 million, but the sale really just shifts the station
from Woody Tanger to his son Doug. WBOQ started out in the late
eighties as classical "W-Bach," the successor to Simon
Geller's legendary one-man WVCA operation, but in recent years
it's become a swinging standards station.

March 19, 1998-

Once again, NEW HAMPSHIRE tops this week's news -- and again,
it's because of job cuts in Granite State radio. Capstar continued
to make staff cuts at Manchester's WGIR (610/101.1) this week,
starting with the entire morning show on the FM side. Alan Baxter
(known on air by last name only, Elle B., "Silent Steve"
Gamelin, and "Jeff the Intern" were notified after
Monday's show that they're out of work. Afternoon host Fil Robert
Kaye is handling morning duties temporarily, but NERW hears that
the long-term plan is to simulcast the Greg Kretschmer and Jeanmarie
morning show from sister station WHEB (100.3) in Portsmouth.
On the AM side at WGIR, sports director Rich Levine is the latest
to be fired. Former news director Bill Rossi, meantime, has taken
a job with Metro Networks in Boston.

It's not just Capstar, though; down the Everett Turnpike
in Nashua, five staffers at WSMN (1590) are out of work, including
longtime WSMN personalities John Halbert and Nick Diamond. New
PD Ned Crecilius (of WADN Concord MA) is installing a local talk
format at WSMN, with hosts including Woody Woodland, a former
sportscaster and salesman at the late WOTW-FM (106.3). WSMN is
playing adult contemporary music in middays and evenings for
now.

Up north, we hear WQTH (720) in Hanover is going back to
the drawing boards to build its four-tower array, after a local
zoning board gave a thumbs-down to the 266-foot towers. Will
Bob Vinikoor's new 50-kilowatter make its fall target date? We'll
keep you posted... (Ten Years After: Bob's still fighting
to get WQTH built...)

In CONNECTICUT, the unlicensed Nueva Radio Musical (104.5)
in New Haven remains off the air for now, while trying to fix
some problems that were causing interference to licensed WYBC
(94.3) in the city's Hill neighborhood. The station's operators
have gathered 2,000 signatures on a petition calling on the FCC
to grant them a waiver to return to the air without a license
and below the usual 100 watt minimum.

Up the road in Hamden, the town zoning board is considering
an application by WKCI (101.3) to build a new 625-foot tower
on Gaylord Mountain Road, just down the hill from WKCI's current
site on the tower of WTNH (Channel 8). WTNH isn't renewing WKCI's
lease for tower space -- so WKCI needs the new stick to stay
on the air from its current site. Neighbors are expressing the
usual concerns about a "tower farm" in their backyards...

The founder of what was once one of MASSACHUSETTS' largest
radio/TV groups has died. Thomas O'Neill was working in the Boston
office of his family's tire business in the late 1940s when he
paid a visit to the Yankee Network, the radio broadcaster that
General Tire had recently purchased. He's said to have returned
from the visit and told his family that he was more interested
in radio than tires -- a decision that led to the formation of
General Teleradio in 1948. General Teleradio put WNAC-TV (Channel
7) on the air that June, and grew over the next decade to include
stations in New York (WOR) and Los Angeles (KHJ) as well. In
1954, O'Neil bought RKO Radio Pictures from Howard Hughes and
General became RKO General.

O'Neil remained chairman of RKO General until his retirement
in 1985, as the company was forced to sell many of its licenses
(including WRKO radio and WNAC-TV) following accusations of billing
irregularities. O'Neil died Saturday of heart failure at his
home in Greenwich, Connecticut. He was 82. In other Bay State
news, WCCM (800) in Lawrence has been granted FCC approval of
its sale from Curt Gowdy to Costa-Eagle -- but "with conditions,"
according to the FCC database. We'll let you know more as we
learn it.

NorthEast Radio Watch is made possible by the generous
contributions of our regular readers. If you enjoy NERW, please
click here to
learn how you can help make continued publication possible. NERW
is copyright
2008 by Scott Fybush.